


The Siren's Song

by AmateurScribes



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Domestic Fluff, Dreams vs. Reality, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Wishful Thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 23:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19119478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmateurScribes/pseuds/AmateurScribes
Summary: "For some people, it gives them what they think they want."Simmons wouldn't have been able to predict what his Labyrinth would show him, not even in theslightest.





	The Siren's Song

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to all you Simmons fans out there who weren't satisfied by his canon Labyrinth.
> 
> No Beta because it's almost the end of the school year and I'll have plenty of time to use her later, so all mistakes are my own!

He tosses and turns, sweat dripping down his brow as his breathing halted.

"Simmons."

The things he was seeing, they were enough to make the bravest of men pause.

Guns, violence, death, and war and war and war after war after war.

"Simmons, wake up."

He had armor on and everyone around him had armor on, nobody had faces only brightly colored helmets that matched brightly colored full body armor.

It seemed like it would never end! It was just one battle followed by another, it would go to make anyone go mad! 

But worst of all it seemed like he was  _ always getting separated from- _

"Simmons!" Grif yelped in shock, as he woke up with a loud gasp, sitting up in a flash as his hands dug themselves in their bed sheets. "What the hell?!"

He took a moment, to breath- really breath- and his eyes roamed over the room, taking in the sunlight that was filtering in from the windows, made barely visible by how the drapes were closed.

The room, it didn't look like it belonged in any sort of military base, not even the buildings that Kimball had supplied for them back on Iris. 

His eyes were drawn towards the other person in the bed, a concerned looking Grif who was looking at him as if he had grown a second head whilst sleeping.

But Grif's unmasked face was unmarred by any sort of skin graph, and there were no other scars upon his face.

_ Wait. _

"Grif, what-" he starts to ask, before taking a pause to swallow harshly. "What's going on?"

"I don't know, dude, you tell me," Grif shifts a little from where he's also sitting up on the bed- the bed that Simmons has just finally noticed that  _ they're _ sharing together. "One minute we're having a nice morning of sleeping in, the next you're having nightmares and when I try to wake you up you react like, well, like you have no idea where you are."

"But I don't have any idea where I am," he scowls. 

Grif's eyes dart to the side, and he gets a look of consternation on his face, "Well, that's not good."

"What happened to Genkins and to the time gun!" he starts to climb out of the bed, his lanky limbs- lacking any sign of cybernetics which causes his heart to stutter slightly in a panic- getting caught in the sheets, giving him a bit of a fight as he tries to stand up. 

Grif too gets out of the bed, although which much more grace than he, which was ironic considering Grif hardly did anything with grace.

"I have no idea who that is," his fellow Red reaches out to him, and he lets him. "Are you having those dreams again?"

That causes him to pause stiffly, stumbling over his words, "D-dreams?"

"Yeah, you've been having dreams of being a space marine, or something, recently," Grif looks much more confident now. "Did you have one again?"

"I-" he did, he'd be lying if he said that he  _ hadn't _ had a dream about himself and others wearing armor. "Yeah."

Grif sighed and relief, and chuckled slightly, "Ok, good, for a second you had me worried there. I thought you had developed amnesia overnight or something."

That made sense- the dreams that is. In hindsight, it  _ is _ an outlandish thought that he could possibly be a solider or anything of that sort.

But a part of him is still unconvinced as he says awkwardly with a wobbly grin, "Or something, yeah."

Just a dream, that's all it was.

"Well, there's no point staying in bed now," Grif reaches up pulling his arms in a stretch that had his joints making a loud pop, his shirt pulling up with the action giving Simmons only a peak of his stomach. "With how excited you were yesterday about talking about the wedding, I'm sure you'd drag me out of bed if I tried to catch a few more winks anyways."

Simmons' brain comes to a complete halt.

"Wedding?" he repeats, unsure if he heard Grif correctly.

"Uh, yeah," Grif rolls his eyes, but not in an annoyed way, more of a fond way. "Our wedding."

Now he's sure that his heart had stopped.

Marrying Grif that was- that was something he had only thought about in the late hours of the night when no one was awake. It was something he had never thought that he would get but hoped really hard. It was one of the things he had thought about when they were in the storage closet, it was-

It was all apart of his dreams. Like the one he had last night.

Which meant that it was really happening. So his dreams were probably reflecting all of his nervousness.

"Shit," Grif cursed as he looked at the clock. "I told Kai I'd get her around noon, and you know how much she wants to help with planning the wedding- colorblindness be damned."

The other man moved towards the closet, already pulling off the shirt he wore, and Simmons couldn't help but flush red and look away. When he shouldn't have had to, of course, considering that they were  _ engaged _ and they were going to get married and were probably already  _ intimately _ involved-

"Hey," Grif touched lightly against his elbow to get his attention, bringing awareness to the fact that in his fluster, Simmons had covered his mouth with his hand, the other arm curled tightly around his stomach. "Come on, let's get started on the coffee so that your brain can get a jump start for the day."

Simmons lets Grif pull him along the house, and as they walk he looks at the walls and all the portraits and picture frames covering the walls, all the happy pictures between the two of them together and on some of them he can spot Kai-

And before he knows it he's in the kitchen, watching as Grif turned on the coffee making, letting the noise from the machine fill the silence.

"I'll go get Kai while you wait for your disgusting bean juice," Grif makes a face at the thought of the caffeinated drink. "Wait for me?"

"Uh, yeah, of course," he says.

Grif comes forward and leans in to give him a kiss on the lips, and for the moment Simmons is shocked once again, but it doesn't take nearly as long for him to reciprocate.

It's good- no, it's more than good, it feels like everything he ever wanted and more- at least, what he wanted from his dream at least. 

He doesn't want this moment to end, but eventually, Grif pulls apart, gives him a lopsided smile before heading to the door, pulling on his shoes, and waving goodbye to him, saying, "I'll be back in a few with Kai."

"Yeah," he croaks, still not having recovered from the kiss.

He watches as Grif leaves the house, seeing a glimpse of the beach on the horizon, shutting the door behind him.

Simmons feels content, more content then he's ever felt in his life.

And yet it feels like-

"Simmons!" a voice calls out to him, shocking him out of his wandering thoughts.

Turning around, he's shocked to see the armor that he had seen in his dreams- brightly colored armor that didn't fit the setting of a house near the beach didn't fit the domestic life he was living.

But to say that he didn't recognize the color would be a lie, even if it was a dream.

"Donut?" he asked, his voice like sandpaper against the dry desert that has become his mouth. He finally noticed that Kai is beside Donut as well, wearing yellow armor just like what he'd seen last night, but that doesn't make sense. Grif had just gone out to get her-

"Simmons, I need you to snap out of it, bud," Donut's voice is firm, yet soft, an undertone of pure unadulterated grief hidden within. "This isn't real."

"What- what are you talking about," his eyes dart over to Kai, expecting this to be some kind of joke, but her head is down and she won't look at him. "What do you mean not real?"

"This is all a part of the Labyrinth, it's designed to get you to- to kill yourself," the pink soldier tumbles and trips over his words, and it sounds as if he was barely able to keep a different set of words held back.

"But-" he looks around the kitchen. It looks real, it feels real, so it must be real. Right? "How would giving me what I want the most get me to kill myself?"

Kai gives shudders as she breathes, a wet and miserable sound. He cannot see her eyes, but he knows that there are tears yet to be shed.

"I know it seems really tempting, but it's not real," Donut gestures to himself and Kai. "Would we be here with armor on if this was your perfect- your perfect ending? And what about you?"

Looking down he's shocked to see that he is wearing armor, maroon like dried blood.

The world glitches around him but stays firm.

Like a tidal wave, everything that had happened since remembering the paradox crashes down on him, threatening to fill his lungs and steal his very breath away. It doesn't even matter that his lungs are artificial, metal can rust just as easily as lungs can decompose.

He's inclined to believe them now. And to think-

And to think he had been so easily tricked.

"Damn it," he cursed, clenching his fists tightly as heat rises to his cheeks, turning them bright red under his helmet. "I should have figured it out sooner, there's no way Grif would have been able to keep a house this clean- even if we shared it together."

It's the reminder of Grif that brings his thoughts back towards the duo in front of him.

"Speaking of Grif, where is he?" he asks, expecting the orange SIM to pop out of nowhere to laugh about how ridiculous his Labyrinth had been.

Neither of them answers him.

"Guys?" he lets out a nervous laugh. "Did- did you guys not get to him yet? That's ok, I'm sure that I can get him to realize that it's all an illusion."

"Simmons," Donut starts to say, but he cuts himself off, looking away with hunched shoulders. "I- I'm sorry."

Now it's his turn to be silent.

"For what," his eyes blink really quickly, and he's not sure why. It's not like he's trying to hold back tears. "For getting me first? It's probably for the best, I know Grif better than most-"

_ "I'm sorry for not grabbing his hand quick enough!" _ Donut yells, his words quick and relentless in their assault. "I'm sorry, I- I didn't think he'd let go!"

"...I don't understand," and he doesn't, he really doesn't, his brain just isn't processing the words that Donut is saying.

"I- I couldn't stop him from- from going over the edge," Donut looks away in shame. "And now he's gone, just the same as Lopez, all because I thought- I really thought he wouldn't have been defeated that easily!"

He can only hear white noise, a buzzing static filling his head.

This- this wasn't possible.

"He always seemed more emotionally reserved than the rest of us and I just- I assumed," the other man continues to apologize.

Not recognizing the ticking time bomb he's just set off.

"Grif's dead?" he asks, cutting off the ramblings of the other man.

Donut falters, and it takes him a mere pause before he confirms, "Yes. I'm sorry."

"That's-" he clenches his eyes shut and counts to three. One. Two. Three. But when he opens them, he still sees the pair, and he has to think about what part of all this was the  _ real _ dream. "He was just here."

"Simmons-" there's pity in Donut's voice.

"No! He was  _ just _ here," he turns away from them and looks at the door Grif just left. "I saw him, he- he was here!"

"That wasn't him," Kai says softly. "I- I saw him too. In my Labyrinth. But... but that's not Dex."

"No," he shakes his head vigorously.

"Dex is gone," she sobs, lowering her helmet until it's practically against her chin. "I'm happy that your illusion was nicer than mine, but that's not Dex! Because Dex is  _ never _ coming back."

There's silence after her words.

But Simmons breaks it with a confident, "Yes he is."

"Simmons please," Donut pleads.

"He's coming back, he said he would," his fists clench because maybe the dreams had really messed with him and now he was hallucinating the soldiers he had seen. "I'll  _ prove _ it."

He makes towards the door.

"NO!" Donut leaps for him, pulling him back and trying to hold onto him as tightly as he could.

"Let me go!" Simmons struggled against him, ignoring the warning bells in his brain that told him a mere illusion couldn't tangibly interact with. "I said,  _ let me go!" _

Jerking his arm backward, he clocks Donut in the head with his elbow, getting the other man to release his grasp on him, and while the pink soldier recovered from the hit, he leaped towards the door, opened it-

And stepped  _ out. _

**Author's Note:**

> Unrealistic alternate ending to this fic: Grif and Simmons (and Lopez but he's a robot so...) don't die from the black hole/waiting for the right timeline, and they become immortal and get to spend so many years taking the universes longest honeymoon getting to relax before they meet up with the Reds and Blues again.
> 
> If you want to contact me, you can find me at either of my Tumblr's: @agent-murica (main) and @amateurscribes (writing)!


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